FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Where are the limitations?

4 October 2010

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation, or both. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to indicate not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as on "hate speech”. FOS is anything that we want to say without violating third party or other people, as long as the freedom of speech is not for fraud.
To view on this matter, a dialogue with YB Dato’ Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, Minister in Ministry Department discussed upon the topic, “Freedom Of Speech: Where are the limitations” has been held at Annexe Hall, SAAS Tower UiTM Malaysia. The dialogue was launched by Y. Bhg. Dato' Prof Ir Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar, the Vice Chancellor of University Teknologi Mara UiTM.
The organized of the event seemingly fall to the right on time when the society nowadays are more intelligent and have the desire to voice out their opinion, comment and criticize on a certain issues regarding of their interest such as politics, economy, crimes, leadership and so on. Moreover, the technologies nowadays has made internet as a fastest channel to convey information, ideas and communication more faster than before. Because of that, many problems and violation of freedom of expression has been violated by certain party because of lack of knowledge about the constitution of Malaysia regarding freedom of Speech.
In Article 10, Freedom of Expression of the Human Rights Act 1998, which is a qualified right, states everyone has the right of freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This guarantees the right to pass information to other people and to receive information that other people want to give to you. It also guarantees the right to hold and express opinions and ideas.
To discus on the enforce law of freedom of speech and expression, the Minister, YB Datuk Mohamed Nazri has been asked on how the government overcome and control so that people or citizen won’t be easily abuse the right of speech and expression using the act.
Datuk said, “even though that we free to speak and expressed our ideas and feeling, but we have to remember that we have government which control us from misbehaving and stop us to violate or offense in order to maintain peace and harmony of the country.” He also emphasized that the act to control freedom of speech and expression is depends on how our civilize society accept the issue on the first place. If the people become less sensitive towards the sensitive issues, the existing act will be n longer used and will be amended.
The Dato’ also give the advice to the future journalist who would become the apprentice of the industry on the future to become more objectivity and not to make the reporting as personal because he said, once the journalist loose it objectivity, therefore the credibility and the dignity of the report or story will be questioned.